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A Reprint 

from the pages of 

The National Magazine^ 

Published in 
Boston, Mass. 



Jo ^ 

Mammoth Cave 



Is on the 

Through Line ^et<ween North and South, 

Louisville d) Nashville R. R. 



^P^HIS greatest of all of America's Great Natural Wonders is situated in 
§3 Edmonson County, Ky*, about eight miles from the main line of the 
Louis'ville & Nashville Railroad; ivith <which it is connected at Glasgo<w 
Junction by a picturesque mountain railroad. Trains of this short line meet princi- 
pal trains on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, making the trip in about 30 
minutes. A trip through the Short Route in the cave occupies about four hours, 
and the Long Route about nine hours. The trip can be made to the cave, both 
routes through the cave can be taken, and passenger can be ready to resume his 
journey vjiih a detention of not over 24 hours. 

REGULAR RATES. 

Board at Hotel, per day, . , ^ $2.25 
Cave Fees, Longf Route, . . 3.00 

Short Route, . . 2,00 

These charges include services of guide^ lights, etc. 

REDUCTION, 

For a party of tO, reduction of 25 per cent, from above rates for ca'be fees; 
for a party of 50, reduction of 33^ per cent., and for a party of tOO, reduction 
of 50 per cent. For all information as to rates and accommodations at the cave. 

Address, H, C, GANTER, Manager, 

Mammoth Cave, Ky, 

STOP-OVER ALLOWED 

On all through tickets v^ithin their limits, and on all through tickets the destina- 
tion of vjhich is a point on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, 
For other information as to railroad rates, routes, etc, address, 

C, L. STONE, Gen'l Pass, Agent, 

LouislJille, Ky, 




The Entrance to the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, 



IN KENTUCKY'S MAMMOTH CAVE 



BY R.- ELLSWORTH CALL, PH.D. 



FIRST among the caverns of the earth 
the Mammoth Cave has long at- 
tracted those who love the marvel- 
lous and the unique. It has appealed to 
their sense of the beautiful; to their love 
of the strange and wonderful; to their 
powers of imagination. The impressions 
which casual visitors and long-time stu- 
dents have gained have produced a great 
mass of literature the titles of which, both 
books and pamphlets, now make a list 
which nearly numbers four hundred. Of 
these most are the results of hasty visits, 
others of borrowed material revised and 
not always well authenticated; others still 
are the result of gleanings by those who 
have never seen more than a moiety of 
the wonders which this great underground 
region has in store. 

In the early part of the present century 
a hunter by name of Hutchins, or 



Ilouchuns, gave through an accident ot 
the chase the first information of the 
great cave. In pursuit of a wounded bear 
which, hard pressed, took refuge in the 
entrance, then nearly filled with the 
debris of the primitive forests, he found 
the cavern. How far he ventured within 
its forever open mouth, what he thought 
as the great, gloomy hall became more 
clearly outlined in the uncertain blaze of 
his pine knot torch, will remain alike un- 
known. Whether the Hutchins of tradi- 
tion ever lived is now unknown. No trace 
of the family name remains in that part 
of Kentucky. It is certain only that the 
cave was discovered. Its original finder 
made haste to tell of his discovery and 
soon the local world was talking of the 
great wonder. 

The finding of this cavern had more 
than a passing significance. In 1809, 



IN KENTUCKTS MAMMOTH CAVE 



when tbe cavern was made known, 
gunpowder was almost worth its 
weight in gold in Kentucky. Far 
away from the great centres of civili- 
zation that necessary part of the back- 
woodman's paraphernalia was hard to 
procure and was treasured carefully 
when obtained. Several years previ- 
ously, in 1805 and 1806, a roving Phil- 
adelphia chemist had investigated the 
nitre bearing caves in the vicinity of 
Lexington, then the Kentucky metrop- 
olis. As Latinus first taught the 
Latins agriculture so Doctor Samuel 
Brown first taught the early Kentuck- 
ians the value of nitre bearing soils 
and the process of gunpowder manu- 
facture. Caves, over-hanging cliffs, 
shelving rocks, were alike examined 
and the loose debris on their bottoms 
or faces was examined for lime nitrate 
to use as the basis of the manufact^ire 
of saltpetre. A great industry v.as 
soon inaugurated in Kentucky, made 
more generally useful till by the em- 
bargo which tho war of 1812-14 put on 
our foreign commerce, and cave-hunting 
for this purpose became more than a pas- 
time. Every open hole was entered; every 
suitable location exploited. Mammoth 




lt:&te^J 




The Path leading up to the entrance of the Cave. 



Copyrighted by H. C Ganter. 

Lover's Leap, 

Cave was visited with this purpose in 
view and vast quantities of soil, charged 
with lime nitrate were found. Soon Phil- 
adelphia and Lexington capitalists con- 
trolled the cavern and its exploita- 
tion went on with a view to secur- 
ing its great mineral content. 
Every accessible part of the cave 
was soon visited and from the 
miners came wonderful stories of 
extent and beauties; nor were these 
accounts entirely free from the inci- 
dents which Aivid imaginations 
sometimes give to unusual places. 
Occasional vague accounts, agree- 
ing only in the statements as to the 
great extent of the ca«rern, soon 
found their way into the eastern 
press and the great cavern was a 
fact of history. But not yet of 
science. More than a quarter cen- 
tury passed before any scientific 
account of the cavern was pre- 
pared: and this was not unmixed 
with the improper use of the im- 
agination in science. About the 
year 1840 marks the time of the 
first fairly accurate account of the 
scientific aspect of Mammoth Cave. 
The history of the various maps 
of this cavern would prove interest- 



72V KENTUCKY'S MAMMOTH GAVE 



fng reading to the antiquarian. Tliey 
begin in 1814, with a brief and 
inaccurate sketch map, by a certain 
Mr. Bogert, followed two years later 
by the impossible map of Doctor 
Ward, in the Worcester Spy, and by vari- 
ou- modifications of these in the mag- 
azine literature of the period. The first 
and only published instrumental survey, 
presented in map form from the time of 
discovery to the present date, was Lee's 
map, made in 1835. Neither compass nor 
chain have been employed in any other 
survey and all others are largely products 
of a rather lively imagination. Distances 
and areas are often misstated; something 
in the crude methods of illumination gives 
on magnified ideas of dimensions. The 
^ exact truth is sufficiently wonderful and 
J no one who has seen any part of its laby- 
• rinthine wanderings, its grand halls, its 
'marvellous rivers, its abysmal pits, In 
, '''•vaulted domes, wishes for statements 
other than facts. 

The visitor to Mammoth Cave reaches 
It after a most pleasant ride over the won- 
derful region of west central Kentucky, 
traversed by the great Louisville and 
Nashville railroad, whose palatial coaches 
loito since displaced the lumbering stage 
by which only, formerly, could the cave 
be visited. Half-way between the metro- 
politan cities of the twin states of Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee the cavern invites 
all north or south bound travellers to in- 
spect its wonders during a brief period of 
real rest from the toil of travel. If the 
traveller be an observing man he will 
have noted a peculiar feature in the re- 
gion through which for some time he has 
been travelling. With infrequent excep- 
tions, and these the very largest streams 
like the Green and the Barren rivers, the 
valleys will have no running waters. 
Neither creek nor brook will greet his eye. 
Nor will he fail to note the ^,eculiarly 
broken character of the surface. Here 
and there a larger pit, or depression, may 
attract his attention but he will soon dis- 
cover that he is sweeping across or along 
th- margin of greater depressions, some 
of which are hundreds of acres in extent. 
He will see these peculiar places on every 
hand. As he approaches the vicinity of 
the cave itself these depressions will be- 
come more characteristic of the land- 
scape. He is riding swiftly along in the 



very heart of the "sink-hole region'* -or 
Kentucky, whose entire country rock is 
traversed by underground channels; and 
here and there the surface rocks have 
tumbled in and the pits and depressions 
he sees are the indications of caverns 
without number and without end. Eight 
thousand square miles of this region are 
around him. Master of all the other of 
the hundreds of caves now known in the 
region grand Mammoth Cave is at last 
reached, the goal of his journey. 

The entrance to the cavern is romantic 
in the extreme. Garlanded with noble 
chestnut oaks and tulip-trees, and fringed 
with graceful vines, among which flashes 
out the vivid green of ferns, while the 
damp rocks about and below are covered 
with the brightest of green liverworts, 
and in the midst of them all the cavern- 
ous opening, descending sheer fifty feet, 
under arch of rock from which leaps a 
perennial spring, the outlines of the whole 
shading off into impenetrable blackness, 
such is the scene upon which the visitor 
looks on sudden turn lo the right at the 
base of the hill in which the opening, by 
freak of nature, is placed. Ideal place 
this for artist, for lover, for wooer of na- 
ture! Primeval forests, brilliant birds, 
unaccustomed flowers, new emotions! Lit- 
tle wonder is it that some there ire who 
here turn back, forgetful of the wonders 
below and fain to stay above in the land 
of flowers and sunshine. Once well 
within the entrance the new scenes and 
frequent attractions soon make one for- 
get the upper world so intent does he be- 
come on the things about him. 

Not far within the avenue which leads 
to the first great hall, the rotunda, the 
visitor will pass by a wall of loose rocks, 
regularly arranged and fringing the path- 
way on either side. These were thus 
placed by the miners of 1810 and are the 
sole monument of an Indian woman and 
child which here lie buried, on the left, at 
a spot near Hutchins' Narrows. Few 
there are who know that this spot is thus 
honored, for while signs of primitive visita- 
tions abound far within the cavern, even 
to Chief City, in the old cave, no other 
human remains were ever found in Mam- 
moth Cave. The woman and child have 
been several times particularly described 
by early antiquarian writers, but with the 
descriptions there have been given a num- 



JN KENTUCKY'S^ MAMMOTH CAVhl 

m 




Copy- 
righted hy 
H.C. Ganter. 



The Bottomless Pit. 

Discovered by Stephen Bishop, the original colored guide, 

and first crossed by him on a cedar sapling. 



ber of statements which have no other 
basis than the imagination. 

At the Rotunda, the first magnificent 
hall, and with but two or three rivals in 
the cave, the great work accomplished by 
the nitrate miners first appears. Huge 
piles of lixiviated dirt greet the eye on 
every hand, some untouched during all 
the four score years which have passed 
since first they were heaped from the 



vats. These testify to a work of patriot- 
ism that we had well-nigh forgotten; had 
it not been for these dusky toilers in eter- 
nal midnight the war of 1812 might have 
ended quite differently, for us! But on 
every side are the remains of vats, and 
pipes, and tanks, and framework, used in 
the clumsy chemistry of that day. To 
this place, first of all, was brought the 
nitre-bearing dirt from Audubon Avenue 



IX KENTUCKY'S MAMMOTH CAVE 



the great hall which sweeps away to the 
right with graceiul curve aud roof smooth 
as artificial ceiliug. In winter there may 
here be seen great clusters of bats, in 
hibernation, hanging head downwards 
from boss and point. They are here by 
myriads and make the walls black so 
thickly do they sometimes gather. For 
full three fourths of a mile the bottom 
has been dug over and the loose soil car- 



est great hall in the cave, Chief City, now 
rarely visited by the tourist. But the 
journey to this immense hall of nearly 
three acres extent is well worth the toil; 
while on the way the several more cele- 
brated features may also be seen. The 
Giant's Collin, the Star Chamber, the 
Black Chambers, the Whale, the Cata- 
racts, the Snow Storm, the Salts Gallery, 
all afford their several attractions and 




Copyrighted by H. C. Ganter. 

The Bacon Chamber, showing how visitors have made themselves known 



ried on the shoulders of brawny slaves to 
the vats in the Rotunda. At this point, 
and beyond, the little spring which gave 
the mimic cataract to the over-springing 
arch at the entrance, which we saw as 
we came in, did duty as a solvent for the 
lime nitrate which this soil contained. 
Ihen by pumps it was lifted through the 
entrance to the outer world to there be 
made to yield its powder-making treas- 
ures to the cause of commerce and inde- 
pendence. 

From the Rotunda the Main Cave 
sweeps on to the left with arch fifty feet 
overhead and more than that in width. 
Two and one-half miles away is the larg- 



tell their story to the careful observer and 
the trained chemist. 

Far different from all other parts of 
Mammoth Cave the Gothic Avenue has al- 
ways been attractive to the visitor. In 
few other places, excepting only the 
newly opened Olive's Bower, may stalac- 
tites be seen. Here they are numerous 
and some of them very large. Fact and 
fancy, mythologic lore and historic and 
biographic reminiscence have alike con- 
tributed to their naming. In no portion of 
the great cavern ha^ caprice i- bestowing 
names been so free as here. The Oak Pil- 
\ar, Cfesar and Pompey, the Bee Hives, 
the Bridal Altar, the Arm Chair, are a 



IN KENTUCKY'S MAMMOTH CAVE 




Copyrighted by U. C. Ganier. 

The First Saltpetre Vats used In the early part of the century In the 
production of Nitrate for Gunpowder. 



few of the names suggested by visitors 
and adopted by guides in past years. Tliis 
portion of the cave is a rather low avenue, 
and leads to the Lover's Leap, three- 
fourths of a mile away, where the Dome 
Route usually ends. But beyond this 
point, down the Hill of Difficulty, through 
the Elbow Crevice, past Jacob's Pit and 
through Napoleon's Dome 
under which is Gate- 
wood's Dining Table, 
and the visitor enters 

Gratz Avenue, a tortu- 
ous, narrow way which 

leads to Annette's Dome 

and Lee's Cisterns. All 

naturalists who visit the 

cave should make this 

trip for in Annette's 

Dome is Shaler's Brook 

and in the brook are 

myriads of small white, 

blind crustaceans; here 

also are to be found the 

snow-white leeches, both 

rare and blind. Here 

water actively at work 

in carving domes and 

pits may be seen, better 

perhaps, than in any 

other portion of the cave. 

The beautifully fluted 

and irregular walls, the 

dome widening below, 

the rapidly running 



brook which leaps from a. 
higher channel midway in 
the wall, all tell of the work 
of undergound waters in 
sculpturing; they further 
testify to the process of 
solution as that which na- 
ture here employs. Gratz 
Avenue is named for Hy- 
man Gratz, of Philadelphia, 
who, conjointly with 
Charles Wilkins, of Lexing- 
ton, conducted in this cave 
the manufacture of salt- 
petre during the troublous 
times of 1812-1814. It is 
one of the middle level ave- 
nues, the Gothic Avenue, by 
which it is entered, being 
at the highest level of the 
cave, about on a line with 
the present entrance. 
At the Mummy's Niche, in Gothic Av- 
enue, the guides usually recite the fiction 
of the Indian Mummy of royal blood, said 
to have been found in Mammoth Cave. 
Though long since the real facts were 
made known romance yet permits the 
tale to the faithful guides from whom 
cold science has taken so much during 




Copyrighted by H. C, Ganter. 

The Entrance to Gothic Avenue . 



IN KENTUCKTS MAMMOTH CAVE 



these later years. The story goes that in 
the earlier years of the century, while 
knowledge of the cave was yet but frag- 
mentary, the miners here found, resting 
in the niche, the mummified body of an 
Indian girl, which, from the variety of 
accompanying paraphernalia, their ready 
imagination clothed with regal place and 
burial. But the facts are that the 
mummy came from a neighboring cave. 
Salt Cave, some few miles away but yet 
on the Mammoth Cave estate. It was 
placed here by Gratz and Wilkins, or their 
manager, for exhibition purposes and kept 
for some ti^ in Gothic Avenue. It was 
finally taken to Cincinnati and the east, 
and after having been exhibited in the 
Metropolis at length found a resting place 
in the American Society of Antiquarians 
Museum, in Worcester. So well did it 
rest that its very existence was forgotten 
until a few years since when i-s where- 
abouts and history became known and in- 
terested persons took it to the World's 
Columbian Exposition. Thence it was re- 
moved to Washington and now has found, 
let us hope, a final and useful resting 
place. A recent photograph shows the 
figure to be that of a woman, buried in 




Copyrighted h>, H. C. Oanfer. 

The Star Chamber. 



the manner usual to the North American 
Indian, in sitting posture, with arms 
folded across her breast. The real facts 
are none the less interesting than if the 
mummy had, indeed, been found in Mam- 
moth Cave. 

Among the wonderful features of this 
great cavern, where everything is won- 
derful, the great domes and pits are not 
the least. Some of these reach from the 
base-level of the cave up to, and into, the 
great subcarboniferous sandstone cap- 
ping which is characteristic of the region. 
Beginning as mere fissures these have de- 
veloped into crevices, and the crevices 
into vertical channels through which fell 
the waters that gathered on the surface. 
Little could have been effected by these, 
as mere mechanical agents, notwithstand- 
ing the great periof of time through 
which they have been in action. But 
added to the slight mechanical effects 
were those chemic ones which belong to 
carbon dioxide in solution. The result in 
the thousands of years which have 
elapsed since they began their work is the 
great number of deep pits and domes. 
Their bottoms are strewn with masses of 
rock and finer debris from the sides and 
roofs; on these incessantly fall the 
waters from high overhead, mak- 
ing still deeper these great halls 
and chambers. Some of these, like 
the Bottomless Pit, Gorin's Dome, 
Washington Pit, the Maelstrom, 
and Mammoth Dome, are well 
worth careful study. It is impos- 
sible to put into cold speech the 
impressions which one will gather 
as he stands at the margin or in 
the bottom of the great chambers. 
The sides curtained with alabas- 
ter, folded and fluted in ten thou- 
sand fantastic shapes, here and 
there a boss of coral which casts 
weird shadows from his flickering 
lamp along the vertical walls, the 
merry din of falling waters or the 
patter of hesitating drops which 
make a music unknown in the 
outer world, all conspire with the 
eternal gloom to make the place 
and its surroundings uncanny in 
the extreme. One hears his heart 
beat in the great stillness between 
the falling drops in some, while In 
others where is the rush of falling 



IN KENTUCKTS MAMMOTH CAVE 



waters the ears are dinned 
by the sounds coming to one 
intensified manyfold from 
the resonator chambers all 
about him. No work of art 
so fixes the mind and so 
occupies all the attention as 
these great halls dug out by 
nature in the very depths 
of the earth. Alabaster 
curtains are not to be seen 
everywhere; they are rare 
in Mammoth Cave but they 
are glorious when seen. 
One wishes to get a peep 
behind the stony veil in the 
hope that other secrets of 
nature may thus be re- 
vealed. But, after all, these 
things which we thought 
so secret become plain 
when we make intelligent 
questioning. There are no secrets in 
Mammoth Cave which we may not un- 
ravel by persistent effort. Time and in- 
telligence makes all the hidden things of 
nature to be pL in and open. 

The Mammoth Dome is probably the 
finest specimen of excavated hall in the 
cavern. It is wonderful beyond power of 
language to express. From bottom to top 
the height is little over one hundred and 
fifty feet. But viewed from below in the 
faint light of the rude lamps employed, or 
even in the glare of beng-1 lights, the top 
seems much farther above the observer. 
The distance is apparently increased by 
the fact that a perspective effect is given 
the nearly vertical walls because they 
really approach at the top. Like all other 
domes in the cavern this one widens be- 
low until it becomes a chamber fifty or 
more feet in width, winding in a sigmoid 
curve more than one hundred feet hori- 
zontally. At the upper and right hand, 
midheight, great masses of alabaster 
have formed, while surmounting them 
are the giant columns, resembling works 
of human hands, to which the name of 
Karnak has been happily given. These 
"ruins" antedate their namesakes on the 
Nile; they are covered with sheets of pure 
alabaster which re variously folded and 
contorted, giving one the impressions of 
vast curtains extending in fold after fold 
away into the dim recesses which are but 
imperfectly illuminated. by his lamp. Cer- 
tainly this locality [Willi ^call to one the 




^^74. I 



Copt/righted by H. C. Ganter. 

At the Head of Echo River. 



impressions of his youth when the folk- 
lore tales to which he listened told ot 
wizards and how they turned, by their 
magic, the homes and persons of others 
into lasting stone. We wish we could 
speak the magical words which we feel 
sure will loose the forms we almost know 
are rock-cased here; 

During frequent visits to Mammoth 
Cave nothing in it has so deeply im- 
pressed us as the famous Echo River. In- 
timations of its acoustic glories may be 
had at various points along River Hall, 
notably near Shakespear's Masque, that 
wonderful freak in the rocks which puts 
to blush many a human artist. Certain 
tones produced here come back to the lis- 
tener softened and prolonged like music 
from hidden choirs. But after the first 
or second arch i passed, and the boat ride 
well begun, then comes to one the full 
realization of the wonderful symphony 
which greets him as the result of every 
sound. The very ripples are musical; the 
waves send back a grand anthem; the 
slightest intonation comes back from the 
hidden recesses a chorus. It would seem 
that an army of sprites takes up the 
grosser sounds and remoulls them, makes 
harmony out of discord and ten thousand 
chords out of one! Listen to that simple 
note sent out by the guide whose tuneful 
lips understand how to frame aright the 
sound for this great resonator, for such it 
simply is. It comes back in a thousand 
separate notes, each -one becoming fainter 



IN KBNWCKY'S MAMMOTB CAYB 



and still more faint as they roll adown 
the unknown chambers of this river of 
night. The darkness about us seems alive 
with invisible singers; we must be in fairy 
lanu indeed! We have enjoyed this expe- 
rience more than two score timt • each 
time it seems as new and wonderful as 
when its glories first burst on our ear. 

The discovery of the Echo River fol- 
lowed close upon the crossing of the Bot- 
tomless Pit by the intrepid Stephen 
Bishop, the original colored guide who 
gave us so much of our knowledge of this 
underground world. A cedar sapling was 
liie sole support which allowed him to 
cross the great gulf which had held back 
people for ntarly half a century. In the 
year 1840 he crossed the Pit at the level 
now taken by the tourist and soon an- 
nounced the wonders beyond. The great, 
black stream was beheld by men for the 
first time. Its waters told no story to 
tliese earlier oxp.orers either of life or of 
chemic work. To them it was only a 
slowly ■ flowing stream, from night to 
night. At the end of Purgatoi'y it stood 
as a menace to all who should attempt 
to unravel it? secrets. To us, even now, 
the first venture of the frail and rude boat 
upon its unknown waters without hint of 
what could be beyond, was little short of 
reckless. But the voyage was safely 
mad„ and marvels scarcely to be believed 
wei-e told of what the low arches hid on 
the other side. It is over a half century 
since this voyage was accomplished; the 
tourist makes it now without once think- 
ing of the gallant slave who took in his 
hands his life to gratify the curiosity of 
a master. 

Beyond the Echo River the cavern ex- 
tends nearly three miles i>resenting many 
interesting features not to be elsewhere 
seen. Near the Cascades, in Cascade 
Hall, are two large avenues neither of 
which is visited by tourists and in which 
few persons have ever been. These are 
Stephenson's Avenue and the Roaring 
River. The last named is a portion of the 
Echo River, or a sluggishly flowing 
branch of it, and is named from the char- 
acter of its echo. Only at lowest water 
in very dry seasons can it be with safety 
explored. It is then but a succession of 
deep pools and muddy flats, with an occa- 
sional cross stream of running water. 



These pools are famous haunts for blind 
fish and for the white crayfish, also blind. 
The end of this avenue has never been 
reached. Stephenson's Avenue has been 
traversed by us to its end, near Croghan's 
Hall, but at a much lower level. 

After passing through the long, narrow 
tortuous, avenue called El Ghor, which 
connects Silllman's Avenue with those 
sections of the cave in which crystallized 
gypsum is found in greatest quantity, and 
after climbing i:)ast Mary's Vineyard, 
Washington Hall is reached where begin 
these famous crystalline growths which 
make the marvellous Cleaveland's Cab- 
inet. This is a large, rather low, avenue 
the ceilings and walls of which are com- 
pletely covered with gypsum, "forma- 
tions" of wonderful intricacy and beauty. 
From this point on to near the Rocky 
Mountains either calcite or gypsum crys- 
tals abound. They simulate every known 
form of petal, and are closely crowded 
like mimic flowers; they spread and turn 
in i^lain violation of the ^aws of gravity. 
In the Snowball Room they are of fibrous 
gypsum curling from a center and piling 
up one on another giving completest im- 
pression of a recent schoolboy battle with 
veritable snowballs, thousands of which 
still cling to the roof as if but just thrown. 
The beautiful white masses now and then 
fall of their own weight; but time grows 
others to take their places. Some of the 
"flowers" are as white as snow and quite 
a foot in diameter, with bract, and petal, 
and stamen, and pistil as in the real flow- 
ers of the upper world. These beautiful 
poems in stone seem too frail to touch; 
they make the beauty of the trans- 
riparian regions. 

Our survey ends with Croghan's Hall, 
where are a few small stalactites and the 
wonderful Maelstrom, a pit which rivals 
those we first saw near the entrance. We 
gaze into its depths; we illumine for a lit- 
tle its inky blackness; we hear the drop- 
pings of the mimic waterfall which is 
3'et at work digging the pit deeper still; 
we wonder where and how those waters 
again reach the surface, laden with their 
mineral content. We cannot answer all 
the questions which will arise and turn to 
retrace our steps glad we have had at 
least one view of the underground 
of Kentucky. 





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